Kratos Bwd "Nightmare" build

[Kratos]

While "The Thing" has served me well it was time to move onto a new chassis. Don(BWD) and I have been talking for a while about a new chassis and he told me he had something in the works. I got my chassis last Friday but was unable to get it ready for my comp Saturday because I didn't have any body mounts. This will be a bodied rig and Im very excited about that. I asked Harvo where he got his body mounts for his sporty and he pointed me to Gunnar mounts. Thanks! So I hit him up and ordered me a set of them. These mounts are sweet! I used the same electronics that were in my other truck. Im not happy with the way I have them and will most likely be ordering some Holmes Hobbies BRSL's. Now I did order some motors from Mr. Holmes and they are gonna be sweet. They are the 30t Team Pro Flow Crawler 540 Motors with ceramic bearings and stage 4 weight kit. I cannot wait to get these bad boys and run the you know what outta them. So Ill give you folks the low down on electronics and setup for now

Chassis
BWD "Nightmare" with BWD Ti lower and upper links

Electronics
Mamba Micro Pros(x2)
CC Bec set at 7.6v
Futaba BLS157HV servo
30t HH hw motors with 14t pinions
Futaba 4pk

Front Axle
Vp top half
Vp chubs and XR knuckles
Vp upper link mount
Vp tranny case and motor plate
Vp XR-10 VVD axles
RC4WD gears
Dlux Knuckle weights
Dlux no slop knuckle bushing

Rear Axle
Vp top half
Vp upper link mount
Vp tranny case and motor plate
RC4WD gears
Stock lockouts

Tire/Wheel setup
Front: Wheels- Vp DHII with Voodoo tires (compound will vary with terrain)
Foams- CI DD 5.5 narrow inner with medium outer
Rear: Wheels- BWD CF Mod-Locks with Voodoo tires (compound will vary with terrain)
Foams- CI DD 5.25 narrow inner with medium or firm outer and a medium tuning ring















Ive put about 15 packs through this truck and at first I was having a heck of a time tuning it. It needs an entirely different tune than "The Thing" did. I talked with Don about where to start and that helped a ton. I went through 10-15 different shock/oil setups and finally found one Im starting to like. Im using 4in big bores limited 1/4in internally with silver springs in back and red springs up front. Both shocks have 80wt oil in them and that has helped a lot as well. This truck is a breakover monster! It does breakovers and launches verts much much better than my thing ever did. All I have left to tune is sidehilling since its not quite as good as the thing was for me. Stay tuned

[EverettY]

Woow I've wanted to see more about this chassis So I'm assuming it's not legal without a body correct? The laid down shock setup look killer with how low everything sits

[Highlucks]

Looking good.

[Kratos]

Originally Posted by EverettY

Woow I've wanted to see more about this chassis So I'm assuming it's not legal without a body correct? The laid down shock setup look killer with how low everything sits

That makes two of us who wanted to see more of this chassis. I honestly don't know if its legal without a body or not. Its kinda nice switching back to a body. Everything does sit low and when I order the new speedos it will sit even lower. I plan on lowering everything in the chassis so it doesn't sit so high. The laid down shock setup does look bad ace but it also comes with different shock tuning, which can take some getting used to(at least it did for me)

Originally Posted by highlucks

Looking good.

Thank you

[Harvo]

Great looking rig bro!

[Kratos]

Originally Posted by Harvo

Great looking rig bro!

Thanks! The suspension has been giving me fits. With the shocks being laid down so much its more difficult to tune things, at least for me it is. I took the truck to the local Bass Pro to see how she would boulder crawl. I was impressed. It did everything but the extreme side hills that my other truck did with hardly any tuning. Im very impressed with the breakover ability of this truck. I did a few breakovers today that I was never able to do with "The Thing". It is also very point and shoot. Very predictable. The tires were nothing short of amazing here also. They absolutely owned the donas at this spot. I was running the golds out back and the blues up front and they had mega traction. The rears actually had too much traction at times and would dump the truck. Now that may be impart to my poor suspension tuning abilities but Im working on that. Been talking to a few friends today (Thanks Ty and Jcboof) about shock tuning. The front end would load up the downhill shock and dump the truck on extreme side hills, when I say extreme I mean anything over 50-55 degrees or so. With all their help, I decided to try some stiffer springs in the front to push the rear down on side hills. I had to try it out in my backyard so I got my headlamp and went out back. At first I was worried about the front not wanting to settle on inclines and catching ledges so I started off doing breakovers and off camber ledge grabs. It actually grabbed and settled very well, very very well. Before when my front tires would get into a hole or wedge and want to lift the opposite tire up it wouldn't settle and I would be shaking the steering to get the suspension to settle. With the stiffer springs, I barely had to wiggle the steering at all and it was planted again so I was getting excited that Im heading in the right direction. Up next was this one side hill that I have and its given all my trucks a fit. The truck went right through it! The rear lifted a little but not much and it settled right back down. Did it two or three times in a row to make sure I didn't get a lucky line or something and everytime it did what its supposed to. That's my lil update for the night

[BliB]

Looks kinda narrow between the rear crossbrace and the rear uppers, but it still allows for the flex you desire?

Do you have any pics like the first one but without wheels and body?

[Oz Bruiser]

Looks great Chris. Good to see the build thread up now. Will be easier than on my phone to view pics i think. So when we spoke the other day it was after you had changed your setup all round. I remember you thought you had it working. Was that before or after talking to your mates.

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[Kratos]

Originally Posted by Oz Bruiser

Looks great Chris. Good to see the build thread up now. Will be easier than on my phone to view pics i think. So when we spoke the other day it was after you had changed your setup all round. I remember you thought you had it working. Was that before or after talking to your mates.

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I was close the other day. I was using the red springs up front and switched to some orange ones. That's the only difference as of right not. Going to do some more testing today and tomorrow then im taking it to our side hill comp spot Sunday to really test and tune it for side hills. I limited the front shocks 5/16in to help reduce travel. Its getting there but not quite ready for Battlegrounds. But I will have it ready!

[Kratos]

Originally Posted by BliB

Looks kinda narrow between the rear crossbrace and the rear uppers, but it still allows for the flex you desire?

Do you have any pics like the first one but without wheels and body?

So you want a side view pic without the body and wheels on? The flex your able to achieve with this truck is beyond crazy. If I did not use a cross brace to limit travel in rear and my limiter up front, I could probably get it to go to 90 degrees. Its crazy

[Kratos]

I would like to thank Eddie at Crawler Innovations for allowing me onto the team. I look forward to representing the company

[Oz Bruiser]

Congrads mate. Awsome news.

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[Kratos]

Originally Posted by Oz Bruiser

Congrads mate. Awsome news.

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Thank you very much. I'm very excited about this.

Since I cant leave anything alone I was out tuning again. Put about 6 packs through the truck today(so far) trying to figure out some loading issues in the front end.
Situation: your on a side hill and your front downhill tires is a approaching a small undercut(2in) on a rock turning uphill. The front uphill tire would load up causing the truck to tip and Id have to wiggle to get it to settle, if it would.
Now I figured I could just deal with it but since I'm going to Battlegrounds I need to have my truck as good as I can possibly get it. Plus things like this just bother me because I feel its something the truck should not be doing. So I raised both the front and rear uppers at the axle one hole, which means the front is in the top hole and the rear is in the middle hole. Now that helped but it wasn't quite enough so I spaced the rear uppers at the axle 1/8in on each side, which I'm told makes the suspension more free to work since I took triangulation out of the uppers. It worked great. I'm actually doing uphill off camber digs that I could not do with "The Thing". I'm extremely pleased with the progress of this truck so far and I cant thank everyone that has helped me enough. More to come

[Oz Bruiser]

Good info on the suspension. I know ive had this issue and struggled to dial it out. Ill have to steal that idear of spacing the rear upers and try it out.

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[kerad11]

Same here. Very good info sir.

[Kratos]

Today I went to a few of the clubs comp locations to do some testing and tuning. Five hours later I feel this is my best setup truck I have ever driven. The first location I went was Trendwood. This spot is a great for testing your trucks side hilling capabilities since it can range from 30 degrees to 65-70 degrees. I mounted up the gold dot tires and spent a battery pack just messing around. Some places the truck would do very well and others it would just tip over. I began looking at why the truck was flipping over and noticed 2 things, 1) the truck sits crazy high, and 2) the front suspension was not cycling smooth at all. I started doing some verts where one front tire would hit a lip before the other front tire and noticed that the front suspension was not compressing (the rear was compressing all the way to bottom) so the truck would lift both front tires instead of the one hitting the lip. That told me the front spring rate was too high and I needed to make it softer. So I stopped and went back to the truck to measure skid height at the rear links... 4in skid height. Wth was I thinking taking a truck with a 4in skid height to the place testing side hills. Honestly I don't know what I was thinking but anyway I started tinkering with stuff. To lower the truck I couldn't limit the rear shocks because the rear brace already hits my body mount pretty early so I had to focus on the front end. It was looking at how to do it and was stumped. If I limited my 4in shock I would have almost no articulation and it wouldn't lower the truck as much as I wanted. If switched to a 3.5in shock I would have literally no articulation because my body mount would be hitting the upper links. I looked at my upper links and noticed the bend was bending up, so I took both upper links off and put the bend bending down and from the chassis, basically switching them 180 degrees. I then had the clearance for the 3.5in shock! Yes! But success was short lived. With the 3.5in shocks I had mondo articulation. So what's a guy to do when that happens, well I limited up travel by 1/4 in and it made a hugged difference. For the front shocks I am now running a 3.5in big bore with 40wt oil and a red spring. This truck is a monster now. Most of the club knows me and how I like to setup courses. I setup several courses and ran them back to back with the gold setup and the blue dot setup. With the gold's I had to work in several places and hit a few gates along with having to take a few reverses. With the blue dots I was able to clean every single course I setup. I know some are going to say "Well if you ran the gold's first then its no wonder you cleaned them with the blues because you knew which lines to take." Wrong folks, I ran the blues first on every course. Now that I know this truck can side hill very well I decided to take it to another place that we "boulder" crawl. I figured since I lowered the truck so much and with the new shock setup it would hinder break over performance. I was pleasantly surprised that I still had excellent break over ability, more so than my previous truck in fact with better side hilling. I started to do some pretty technical stuff along with running the courses we ran at last weeks comp. This truck made short work of everything but 2 gates. I had to work on those 2 gates but I was able to get them. I'm very excited about this setup and cannot wait to run it at a comp. Until I get the gold dot tires tuned better, I will not be running them at comps. The blue setup is just crazy here so that's what Ill run. I have a set of silvers ready to try out so well see if they are better or worse

[Kratos]

A few updates. I switched out to firm front springs and medium rear springs. This helped the truck stay planted while still giving it good smooth suspension cycling. We had our first summer series comp this last Sunday and I started off very rough. I absolutely bombed the first course. The truck was working well and the tires were grabbing, the driver just wasn't there. Course 2 was a little better. I managed to finish this course, but I did have to progress pass one gate. I should have straddled both of the gates as you will see in the video but I got greedy and ended up just progressing past. Course 3 was awesome for me. The truck and driver were "one" . I finished course 3 with a -30 and that shot me up from 4th the 1st. Everyone in our club stepped up their driving that day and I was very lucky to walk away with a win. I switched from blue dots after course 1 to silver dots for 2 and 3. The reason was because I had memory foam in them and it was simply too chilly for them, at least it seemed. Here is the video
Kratos 22 Trendwood 5-19-2013 - YouTube

[Oz Bruiser]

Despite having a bad day. Well done to walk away with the win .

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[Kratos]

We had our second comp yesterday and the truck flat out performed. The tires blew me away at this location. I believe the tires had a major factor in my performance today. I had some carnage that we should see on video. My darn futaba servo decided to pick a fight with a boulder and the boulder won. Anywho, I ordered a Hitec 7950 from rpp and paid for overnight delivery so I could have it Wednesday to put into my truck and be ready for when I leave Thursday night. I then had to order a servo horn from rcp and once again paid for overnight shipping to get it by Wednesday lol. Wife is not happy but ill be darned if I'm taking a jimmy rigged truck to a national competition. I won the comp and came away very, very happy with its performance. I installed the new motors from Mr Holmes and they are saweet!!!! Heres the scores to the latest comp we had.

[Kratos]

The truck worked great at BattleGrounds this weekend. I had quite a few driver errors in which caused me not to finish one course. The courses were tough but doable. I ran the silvers on 2 courses and then the blue on the remaining 4. I liked the blues better here than the silvers. On gate 5 of the last course of the day before finals, I shot through the gate did a cartwheel and landed directly on one of my cf wheels which broke the face. It was a nasty, perfect hit so Im not faulting the wheels one bit. I went into finals standing in 5th place. The finals course was tough but thanks to a friend (Ty) I was able to finish. Only one person cleaned gate six on the finals and everyone else that saw the line had to take the top gate in order to progress it. I felt good only taking one gate and a reverse on the finals with a bonus. I ended up 3rd for the day which Im very pleased with. I would like to thank my sponsors at BWD, CI and at Ottsix. All the products were doing great work and appreciate your support.